Archives for February 2015

It’s easy to think of your first job as a tradeoff between money and passion. Either sell out for something stable and secure or eek out a meager existence doing what you love. We tell ourselves that work is supposed to be a grind – that a lucky few are blessed with the talent and good fortune to make millions following their passions, but that, for the rest of us, chasing a dream is an inherently risky and poverty-ridden path.

But what if that way of thinking is wrong? What if you could find a steady job that not only supported your financial needs but enabled and even encouraged you to pursue deeper passions? Tom Sikes ’11, the musician/ad salesman, will tell you that with enough patience and research, exploring a creative endeavor does not require breaking the bank nor working for it.

Sikes began playing music when he was in the fourth grade. In high school, he and some friends formed a six-piece band called Great Caesar. On weekends they’d jet off to New York and play gigs in bars across the city. “We were so young,” Sikes recalls, that “they’d make us wait outside until it was our turn to play, and then we’d have to run onstage, play our set, and get ushered out.” Throughout college, the band would reassemble on weekends in Boston or New York for recording sessions and shows.

As Sikes neared graduation, he faced a choice: continue to pursue music or move on. Like many Williams students, Sikes felt pressured to go towards a conventional career. “I was pretty caught up in doing what I thought I was supposed to do and what I saw my classmates doing. It felt like the only acceptable career paths were doctor, lawyer, banker, or consultant.”

Imagine the Science Quad at 5 a.m. Even on the rowdiest of nights, the pathways would be quiet, the buildings deserted.

It was this time of day her freshman year that Rachel Kessler first realized she could become a filmmaker. She had arrived in the video editing lab early one evening, intent on finishing a piece she was making for a Shakespeare class. For hours Kessler worked, unaware of the time slipping past. “When I finally checked the time, I thought, ‘If I’m having so much fun, this might be worth pursuing.’”

Flash forward four years. Kessler’s in the midst of releasing her second documentary —a story about enslaved children in Thailand who are forced to sell roses to tourists. A former pre-med student who switched her focus to history in her junior year, Kessler balances her time between producing her current project, planning new ones, identifying potential collaborators, and writing a feature film.

I caught up with Kessler in Boston to hear about her journey into film and learn about her experiences creating her most recent documentary.